Determinação de regiões para instalação de Usinas flex

Abstract

The Ethanol was introduced in Brazilian market as an alternative fuel and emerged as an economic strategy to settle down the crisis in sugar market and control the rise in the gas prices, thus reducing the dependence on oil. The development of new varieties of sugar canes that adapts to different climates and regions allows to keep the plants in operation throughout the harvests, that normally takes up to eight months periods. During the off season, however, the plants remain idle, which generates a mismatch between supply and demand in production cycles due the absence of biomass to be processed. In order to solve this mismatch, increase energetic security and ensure supply in critical periods, studies carried out, propose adapting Brazilian plants to flex model, enabling the production of ethanol from different biomass sources, with corn as an alternative with a great potential. Since only 4.5% of the plants in São Paulo and Mato Grosso states are flex model, defining strategically the locations of new flex plants from factors that influence decision-making is critical for optimizing ethanol production during harvest and off season of sugar canes. In this context, the goal of this study was verifying if there are more suitable regions for building flex plants. Therefore, was used the Analytic Hierarchy Process AHP by a set of geoprocessing techniques considering qualitative and quantitative factors. As result we obtained 2 major areas with capacities to attend efficiently those supply demands for products and feedstock. And only 0.33% of these areas strands for regions with 90% or more suitability.